Archive for November, 2018

Mr. Waffle is dipping a cautious toe into the world of the podcast. He is, frankly, dubious but he has downloaded an app on to his phone and is now mentally prepared to move slightly beyond that initial step. His tastes and mine don’t really chime so although I listen to a lot of podcasts, I am not quite sure what to recommend for him. We’ve spent the last half hour looking at options.

I thought “In Our Time” would be suitably worthy; sometimes I listen to it, if I’m feeling strong. “Would I like ‘Desert Island Discs’?” he asked me. I doubt it. I tried to sell him on some of the Slate podcasts but he was not keen. I recommended my hot favourite, ‘This American Life’ but I made him listen to it once before and he did not love it. “Try it all the same,” I urged but to no avail.

When I was growing up my mother used to say that people are mostly honest and I have found this to be basically true. Here it is illustrated yet again (sample size, one, as a former colleague used to say).

As I was running for the tram this evening, I realised that my wallet was not in my bag. I retraced my steps to work and after checking back in the office and not finding it – sigh – I began to compile a doleful mental inventory of all the things that would have to be cancelled and replaced. I thought that perhaps I had left it in the cafe where I had lunch. And happily it was still open at 6.30 and even more happily someone had handed in my wallet and they handed it back to me with the contents entirely intact. Oh frabjous day!

I’d met a friend there for lunch and he had insisted on buying lunch so I had taken my wallet out to pay and then forgot to put it away (genius). In the course of lunch I said to him that I was going to be 50 next year and instead of expressing the surprise and shock which is always the right response when someone tells you this, by the way, he said, “That is fecking ancient.” Which is true but also unwelcome. And looking around the cafe he added, “This is the kind of place you’d expect to be full of 50 year old women too”. I’ll say this much for my tribe, we are very good at handing in lost wallets.

Does everyone else have a work timeline and a personal timeline? I can tell you what I did in work over the course of the last 20 years and what I have done domestically but I can’t match them up. So for example, I can say when the children were born and what employer I was with at the time but I cannot for the life of me tell you what work I was doing at that exact time though in general terms I can tell you what I did in that job from start to finish. It’s like the personal and professional travel on parallel tracks in my brain.

This is not necessarily bad, I suppose, but it frequently leads to diarying near misses where I have committed to go to a work dinner and realise, quite late in the day, that I am also committed to some church type event or a school concert. I suspect that having a work electronic calendar (shared with colleagues), a domestic electronic calendar (shared with Mr. Waffle) and a paper diary, doesn’t help. The paper diary is supposed to marry work and personal but I often fail to add things. For a while, I spent Fridays reviewing calendars for the following week but, somehow, the habit did not take. Suggestions to address my scheduling needs gratefully received.

Can you tell I am out of ideas for this not entirely successful NaBloPoMo?

On Friday, Daniel was still feeling a bit sick so he missed French class. Michael and I went in together. While he was not enthused, he is now resigned to French class which, I suppose, is progress. While he was doing French verbs, I went to the new look Bewley’s and had a cup of tea and a cherry bun. I was pleased with my experience: the tea was good, the bun was good and, as I was in no rush, the fact that service was spectacularly slow was not a problem. A fire is nice at this time of year and although I was seated miles from the fire, it definitely improved the overall atmosphere. I will be back.

Yesterday morning, Mr. Waffle and I cycled off for breakfast together to a new venue recommended in the Irish Times, we were a bit underwhelmed but breakfast is a low stakes investment and we got to go to the architectural salvage yard across the road afterwards so, a win really.

The afternoon was heavy on logistics. My brother was in Dublin again. I collected him from the station and then dropped him and Dan to collect Michael from drama and the three of them went for pizza. Then Michael came home and Mr. Waffle dropped my brother and Dan to the Dart (like a metro only not as useful) and they went to the Ireland v US rugby match. The outcome was pretty much never in doubt and Daniel was pleased. He does not bear losses by his team with anything approaching equanimity.

Then I collected Dan from town leaving my brother to go out with his friends.

This morning, Daniel was called upon to read at mass at short notice. He rose magnificently to the occasion and I felt like a minor celebrity as people rushed up afterwards to congratulate him on his performance. Michael was at hockey with Mr. Waffle and my brother was still in bed. A neighbour called round to ask the boys to distribute leaflets for the Christmas fair next weekend and had loads of interesting news about the neighbours (deaths, births, marriages, house sales). Why do I never hear anything?

After lunch, I dropped Daniel round to a friend’s house and my brother to the train. I felt curiously at a loose end. I went into town with Mr. Waffle who wanted to look at the soldier sculpture before it was moved on tomorrow. Stephen’s Green was full of people who, last minute also, were peering at the statue.

Building on previous success, we went to Bewley’s but there was a huge queue – town was heaving – so we went elsewhere which was mildly unsatisfactory. Mr. Waffle went home and I went around the shops in a desultory fashion and made my way home in the rain. When I got back, Michael was curled up on the sofa in front of the fire resplendent in his dressing gown and slippers. He opined that he had made better use of his afternoon and it was hard to argue.

Herself was in Paris today with her friend, their planned trip for yesterday having been stymied by the gilets jaunes. I was slightly anxious all day because that is my job but I have just received a text confirming that she is safely back.

25 November was my Nana’s birthday which was unfortunate as she always hated the dank miserableness of November. I wonder what she would think of town full of Christmas shoppers and all the lights up. You know what? She might like it.

Michael is on the student council at school and he and his fellow student reps went to a Dublin-wide event in Croke Park. He hadn’t intended to go for election to the Dublin-wide council but when he got there, he threw his hat in the ring. He didn’t get on but it is a big thing to speak to a conference centre full of people and I am really glad that he gave it a go. I said that he could try again next year. He said that he might, he doesn’t seem very pushed either way. How I would love to have myself his levels of Olympian indifference.

Mr. Waffle and I went to a fund raising thing for the school in town last night. It was in a comedy club and the school had some tickets to sell and there were regular punters as well. I felt at least 20 years older than everyone else there, even the other parents.

I found it depressing and, worse, deeply unfunny. It was sexist, racist, homophobic, vulgar and often mean. I sat there glaring with my arms folded throughout. Everyone else was roaring with laughter. Was it me? Am I miserable and middle-aged? Is this what the young people like? Is it unhelpful that I am not a drinker? Is it somehow funnier and less offensive, if you’re drunk? I have been to lots of comedy things over the years, I am not incapable of finding comedy funny (she said defensively). But, I suppose I would never have chosen to go to this kind of show in this kind of venue. I hadn’t realised that there was still so much of that kind of thing out there.

Alas. Definite highlight of the evening was discovering that one of the Princess’s friends was cast in an ad and he is now on telly all the time (in a kind of blink and you’ll miss it way, but still).

Slightly scraping the bottom of the barrel tonight. What news? I have to get up early in the morning for a course I’m doing. Poor Daniel is sick. The weather is rainy and miserable. Michael is grumpy. Herself is in France. Mr. Waffle and I planned to take Monday off to go for a walk together and now I can’t because of a work thing. On Friday it will be a month since my father-in-law died.

Daniel: My home economics teacher said today that her parents live in the country and they have an Aga but you should never buy an Aga because it’s really bad and energy inefficient.
Me: Is it too much to hope that you didn’t tell her about our kitchen plans?
Him: Yes it is, I put up my hand and said, “Miss, my mother’s getting an Aga”.

Thank you Daniel.

In other kitchen related news, the builders have put us off until January so Christmas is on after all.

So the first reading at Mass this morning was a source of mild amusement for Michael and Daniel. Well, definitely for Michael.

A reading from the Prophet Daniel

At that time Michael will stand up, the great prince who mounts guard over your people…

And the second reading was of interest to all, that St. Paul, it’s how he tells them:
Christ on the other hand, has offered one single sacrifice for sins, and then taken his place forever, at the right hand of God, where he is now waiting until his enemies are made into a footstool for him.

A footstool indeed. I hope your own Sunday morning offered up similar nuggets of interest.

Michael was 13 on September 27. This birthday post is a bit late. There’s been a lot on.

Michael loves to read. He continues to enjoy the Economist when other offerings are not available but, as a rule, he prefers fiction to non-fiction. He has a slightly annoying habit of picking up a book and launching in to it just as you are about to start in on it yourself but his parents are sustained by the smugness that comes from having a child who likes to read the same kinds of books as they do.

Other hobbies include playing games on his phone which he definitely regards as a hobby but I wouldn’t call that a hobby as such. He’s still playing hockey which he really enjoys (being Michael he wouldn’t go to training, if he didn’t) and he was quite excited when they were due to play hockey during PE one day at school. Sadly, his schoolmates, who play more hurling and camogie than hockey, did not fully grasp the rules and he returned home outraged because they had been kicking the ball around the field and raising sticks above their shoulders. He is still doing drama which he likes as well. He has games club after school on Tuesday where he plays Dungeons and Dragons type games with other enthusiasts and a saintly teacher who will surely get his reward in heaven. He also still likes playing cards and board games if he can persuade the rest of us to play with him.

Despite eating almost nothing he has shot up over the past six months (shout out to toast and honey which appears to be all a growing boy needs) and is now almost as tall as me. It’s only a question of time before he passes me out. He is still very skinny so it is hard to find trousers that are both long enough to not flap around the ankles and tight enough at the waist to not fall down. He basically has the figure of a super model.

His voice has broken and it’s quite deep although not as deep as his brother’s. He’s still losing teeth (how is this possible?) but I think he may, at last, have lost the final baby teeth.

He cycles in and out to school and is still alive. I have to say, although I am getting less nervous, he still has to go an approved route which is longer than his preferred route. He does not love this.

He and his brother are great friends. Although they can really annoy each other, they have lots and lots in common and mostly they are having slightly incomprehensible conversations about video games and dungeons and dragons. He gets on reasonably well with his sister but he has managed fine in her absence for the past couple of months occasionally forgetting that she is in another country rather than holed up in her room.

Unlike his brother and sister he is not particularly competitive and is inclined to let things go. These characteristics (which do not come from me, I fear) make for a charming companion but not for someone who is particularly driven. He is never happier than when he is left at home to do nothing. These are categorically the best kinds of days for Michael.

In general, he loathes outings but he is resigned regarding them as part of the rain that must fall in every life. He did comment to me once, in a moment of bitterness, that in his view there is no such thing as fun for all the family.

He seems to be well settled in school. Academically he seems to be grand and his dyslexia (which happily doesn’t affect his reading but manifests itself in spelling problems) seems to have improved enormously which is great. He’s learnt to touch type and his fingers seem better at knowing what to spell when typing. Spell check doesn’t hurt either. Socially, he knows the drill and what is expected of him and he seems to be popular with teachers and fellow students without caring even slightly what they think of him so long as they do not impinge on his comfort. He ploughs his own furrow our Michael.

He is the world’s most sentimental 13 year old. “A Muppet Christmas Carol” is his favourite film and he and I are looking forward to sitting down together and watching it on Christmas Eve. I recently made the very significant mistake of giving some of his old toys to his one year old cousin. Poor decision. He is bitter. In my defence I would point out that he has not played with these toys in many years. I won’t be doing that again. He was utterly unimpressed by his aunt telling him that his 10 year old cousin had looked out some toys for the one year old. “If that’s what she wants, that’s fine,” he said shooting me a venomous glance. As I say, he is not one to modify his behaviour to meet societal expectations.

He continues to be endlessly charming and obliging. I find him delightful and although his siblings believe he is a shameless manipulator (“weasel” is the word I think I hear his siblings hiss at him) even they have to acknowledge that he is generally a peacemaker who tries to intervene when other family members go to war. When he is annoyed though, he is utterly terrifying and, as it is very rare, we take it seriously. When he doesn’t want to do something, it is far easier to stop doing it than to insist. He doesn’t use this power often but it is almost invariably effective. Currently I am persevering in sending him to a French class on Friday evenings which, crucially, I have paid for already for a term. He will finish at Christmas and it is hard to know who will be more pleased, him or me.

Overall though, things are good, I think. He seems happy and, better, in general, he is good at knowing what makes him happy which is a gift I would quite like to have for myself. He is the only person who rushes out to greet me when I come home from work and my heart does leap as he rushes out to the door, arms outstretched shouting, “Mama, Mama, you’re home!” I’m not sure that will last forever, so I suppose I should enjoy it while it does.

Regular readers will be aware that I commute to work by bicycle and I am, basically, the much-maligned cyclist’s friend. However, I have to say, my affection was severely tested one lunchtime when a cyclist came flying around the corner on the pavement at speed. Myself and another man who were walking along jumped smartly out of his way. The other pedestrian shouted at him, aggressively, I grant but the cyclist had nearly run us both over. The cyclist then yelled right back at this man, who was black and called out a nasty racial slur. I have to say, I was really shaken. I’m sure there is plenty of racism in Ireland but I have never been so up close and personal with it and it was horrible. I wish I’d said something but I just scurried away out of trouble. I want to do better next time while hoping there will never be a next time at all.

Our French childminder who came to us on Fridays to give the children French lessons had a fascinating range of relations. He was related to famous actors, philosophers, a concentration camp survivor and all round heroine and he has a distant ancestor who as a baby had all her relatives killed in a slave uprising and was only saved by her black nanny hiding her and keeping her safe. All verified on the internet so it must be true. So it wasn’t a complete surprise when we discovered that he was a descendant of the Dukes of Leinster – a long line of younger sons marrying poorly leaving him and his family in relatively modest circumstances but with a really spectacular array of connections. The children were entirely underwhelmed when I pointed out that a direct(ish) relation of Edward Fitzgerald, the hero of 1798 had been turning up in our house once a week.

The boys miss him now though as they have to go out to French classes on Friday evenings: a source of endless bitterness.

Herself: Can I have €37.50 to go to Paris and back on the train?
Me: You were in Paris only a couple of weeks ago – are they going again?
Her: No, I’m going with my friend for the day.
Me: Which friend? How old is she?
Her: My friend from Vermont [probably not a Francophone], she’s the same age as me.
Me: Paris, Paris, two fifteen year olds, I don’t know.
Her: Honestly Mum, it’s only 45 minutes on the train, it’s like going to Bray.

So, I have never celebrated Armistice Day in my life. I have wandered gloomily around Belgium in the rain on the day – it’s a public holiday there – desperately trying to find something for small children to do when everything is closed but I wouldn’t exactly say I was reflecting on the war.

Armistice is funny in Ireland. Obviously during the first world war, from 1914-1918, Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom though many people including three of my four grandparents, were putting in significant efforts to change that situation. Post-independence, there seems to have been a feeling that to celebrate the Armistice was in some way, anti-Irish and against this State. I grew up in the 70s and 80s and I certainly never thought about the Armistice or celebrated it in any way. In fact, I think my first real awareness of it was after the Enniskillen bombing on Armistice Day 1987.

But Ireland has been making its way through what we’re calling “the decade of centenaries” remembering the turbulent times between 1912 and 1922 (the worst is yet to come – dealing with the civil war legacy) and in relation to this, there has been a great deal of talk of World War I and all those forgotten Irish men who went to the front and died. When I was in Cork at the Protestant Cathedral last weekend, I noticed lots of Armistice Day wreaths and memorials and I found myself thinking that it was odd that we never see that in Catholic churches when the overwhelming majority of those killed must have been Catholics.

However, today there was, to my great surprise, a big crowd at mass and the priest made it clear that it was a memorial mass for all the parishioners who had died in what he called “The Great War” – definitely sounded very odd from the pulpit. But they read the names of the parishioners who died in the war and the choir sang and we remembered the dead of the last year (November is the month of the dead for Catholics anyway so it was in keeping) and processed down the church with our candles. It was still surprising to see a woman in the congregation wearing a poppy. I suppose it’s a strand of Irish history that we haven’t really acknowledged very much. That seems changed for good now. It’s taken a while.

Daniel was 13 on 27 September. This blog post is perhaps a little late. Better late than never, I hear you say.

He is a musical child. He loves to listen to music. He has a sense of rhythm and he can hear when he is off key. He is a great dancer – as he says to us while dancing to the intro music on TV shows, “Look at my gyrating hips”. To be honest, we are a bit baffled as to where his dancing ability came from. Not me anyhow, that’s for sure.

He is taller than me now – a matter for great rejoicing. He likes being bigger and taller and can’t wait to be grown-up. He lost another baby tooth recently so not as old as all that. Still, he now has a deep, deep voice and a square jaw. When we went to Cork recently, all the relatives marvelled at how big he had got, even some who had seen him quite recently.

He is very conscientious which I think is a trial to him. He is often disconsolate after team events as the other members of the team just did not try hard enough. Nobody tries as hard as him which might be part of it. He has finally given up hurling and is now doing tennis on Saturdays when he doesn’t have a football match. He seems to like it much better than hurling. He is a dogged and determined player of all sports: coaches love him because he never gives up.

He cycles in and out to school every day. I have to say that I am a bit afraid as I see him off every day but he is getting more and more confident and, I suppose, after 18 months of cycling in and out on his own, he’s pretty competent even though he doesn’t do wheelies like some of his school mates. At least, I hope he doesn’t.

He has newish glasses which are very cool. He doesn’t care much but he would like to wear contact lenses so that he can play more and different sports. He has sports goggles but that is only the beginning. The optician says he needs to wait another little while to get lenses. During the year, the ophthalmologist said, basically, that he never needed to see us again, patching had worked for Dan’s astigmatism and as he was longsighted his underlying condition would only improve from now on. He also said to Daniel’s great delight, that it was one of the few eye conditions that was actually improved by watching the TV and playing on the iPad. I mean really.

He loves playing board games – long elaborate Dungeons and Dragons type things. He gets very caught up in the lives of the characters. He used to love to read all the time but now, it’s much harder to find things he likes. He still re-reads books he read when he was younger but it is hard to find new books that he gets really absorbed in. He absolutely loved “Ender’s Game” but since that success, quite a while ago, we seem to have had more misses than hits. Suggested books for a very sporty 13 year old welcome.

He loves his x-box. He is only allowed to play on Saturday and Sunday mornings, an unfairness to which he is largely resigned. He is fascinated by American Youtube videos which he finds hilarious – College Humour, I’m looking at you (I know, unsuitable, true of so much material on the internet). I find to my horror that I have turned into my father who, when I was young, used to constantly interrupt me to tell me to stop using Americanisms. I now visit the same torture on Daniel as he recounts things from the internet to me. In my defence, I didn’t have the same ear for accents that he has and my Americanisms were, at least, delivered in a Cork accent.

At school, he seems popular with the teachers – he’s quite academic and a bit of a perfectionist so I imagine that helps. There are aspects of school that he finds tedious – they are going through Romeo and Juliet at a rate of two pages per lesson and I think he may kill someone before the process concludes – but he does enjoy a number of other classes so it is not all bad.

I’d like to see him arranging to meet friends outside school more often but I think that I overestimate his organisational skills (and those of his friends) a bit sometimes and things just don’t come off for him due to a lack of appreciation that time is finite and if you’re doing a, b and c on Saturday then d may not be possible. I sometimes wonder whether this is because he is as much as a year younger than some of the other children in his year in school. On the other hand, it is not as though I am struck by the organisational skills of his friends.

He gets on like a house on fire with his brother. They still bicker a bit but it seems to me, less and less. They have loads in common. He and his sister have a more challenging relationship; it reminds me a bit of my own relationship with my brother. They can drive each other up the wall. He finds his parents and his family generally a bit of a trial – you never know when they might burst into song on the street startling other pedestrians like in an American musical. At least, this seems to be how he feels many family interactions in public look. I may have hummed as I walked is how I would characterise the same event. Still, all this is normal, your family are mortifying when you’re a teenager.

He is still a very picky eater but, in fairness to him, he is willing to try more things but the almost invariable response to a new savoury food sensation is, “No thank you, not for me.” Obviously, a big improvement of the “yuck” of younger years but still not exactly heartening. He has expanded his range of approved foods but not massively, sadly.

He quite likes getting dressed up in a shirt and trousers for an occasion but most of the time his wardrobe consists of nylon sports gear. I do not love this but he is not alone in this obsession.

He does not like my outings but he is often more inclined than his siblings to give things a go, even though he strongly suspects that any outings are doomed to disappointment. Not exactly an outing, but he and Michael attend a much loathed French class on Friday evenings and he is really reasonable about giving it a chance and not giving up and I think he even quite likes it now. Well, that may be a little optimistic but I think I can say he doesn’t hate it.

Enjoying an outing:

He and I share a liking for fantasy and science fiction so sometimes we go to the cinema together to watch things that the others can’t face which I quite enjoy.

He is polite and obliging. If asked to do work around the house he’ll do it, if not happily, then at least readily and, crucially, efficiently. When he gets annoyed he can find it hard to stop being annoyed but I’ve noticed that over the past year, he has got much, much better at getting over it when he gets annoyed. So I face into the teenage years with a certain amount of optimism.

Overall, he is, as our American friends say, “a great kid.” He’s kind and generous, hardworking and obliging and interested in all kinds of things, even, on occasion, dull outings.

So about January this year, we thought that we would do some work on the kitchen and the utility room. We got drawings, we got costings, we scaled back our ambition a bit. We went backwards and forwards for months. Work was due to start in September, it did not. Nor did it start in October. It was definitely to start this Friday. The builder promised it would be finished for Christmas. Is it starting this Friday? It is not. Will it be finished for Christmas? I don’t think so, woe and alas.

For the first time since November 2006, I forgot that November was national blog posting month. We’ve had a lot on. Maybe I’ll try to keep it going from here on out so it will be almost NaBloPoMo.

I haven’t got a lot to offer this evening. I was listening to a podcast (words which make my entire family roll their eyes) and they were talking about fairies and Irish. Síofra is a very popular Irish girls name for the cohort about 10 years younger than me and below. Sí is the Irish for fairy and I knew it was fairy related in some way but hadn’t really given it a lot of thought. “Do you know what it means?” the presenter asked, “It means changeling.” I felt the hairs rising on the back of my neck. A belated happy Hallowe’en to you too.

Hang on to your hats out there for more startling insights all the way to the end of the month.

Of late, I have taken to trying to put my phone down at 6.30 when I come in from work and not picking it up again until I go out to work in the morning. I have imposed my draconian regime on Mr. Waffle and the boys also. From when I come home, no one looks at the phone. I’m not saying it works perfectly all the time and sometimes things ping in or there is a phone call but basically we are phone free for most of the evening most of the time. I have a slight tendency to check the phone as I’m going to bed but I am trying to stop. Overall, it’s great for me. Now Mr. Waffle is saying we watch too much telly but, frankly, that’s a bridge too far for me. I’ll keep you posted on our progress towards Victorian evenings.

The coda to our logistics last week was getting Herself back to France. She was due to fly out at 9.50 on Wednesday morning. Alas, I did not see some form online which was supposed to be filled in for under 16s [Air France didn’t need one but Aer Lingus did – I know, I know, when you’re explaining you’re losing] and she was thrown off on the steps of the plane. Mr. Waffle had to zoom back to the airport and re-book her for a later flight and then we needed to re-book her train from Charles de Gaulle to the west of France. It was all a bit stressful. She is Miss Super Competent in fairness to her. She got on the plane in Dublin and from there, unaccompanied, navigated her way to the train station in CDG and on to the express train back to her host family in the west of France.

Poor Mr. Waffle meanwhile spent the morning in the airport (unexpectedly, obviously) and then came home to find that the wretched cat had captured a blackbird and brought it into the kitchen. Mr. Waffle arrived home to a storm of feathers and the bird standing dazedly on the work surface between attempts to hurl itself out the closed window. The cat was pacing the floor frantically some dimly understood precept (or possibly her vast bulk) preventing her from hopping up on to the work surface. Mr. Waffle threw her into the utility room and ushered the bird into the garden. The cat got out the cat flap in the utility room and was waiting anxiously for them at the back door so that escape plan was not entirely successful. The bird got out eventually and we are still finding feathers in surprising places. Joy.

Meanwhile it was Halloween in Dublin and for the first time since moving in, our decorations beat next door’s. It could be that now that their children are 19 and 17 they are not trying so hard but I like to think that we really tried. The boys looked very impressive in their costumes but were too sophisticated to go door to door and just wore them for school.

We had planned to go to Cork for a couple of days over mid-term before Mr. Waffle’s father died and I wondered whether we should cancel but after some humming and hawing we went in the end. In a new development, the boys stayed in my parents’ house and Mr. Waffle and I stayed with my sister. This was a very satisfactory development for everyone except, possibly, our host.

We drove down on Thursday night which was a bit of an epic trek but it did mean that we woke up in Cork on Friday morning ready for a day of Cork related fun. In what can only be called the high water mark of family cultural engagement, the boys said that they wanted to go to Charles Fort in Kinsale on Friday, so we did. It was a bit damp but we missed the worst of the rain. On the strength of this, I bought a new family heritage card for €90 which means that we have to go to at least six heritage sites over the next year to break even. I fear the worst. So do the children.

We went for lunch in the Bulman and Daniel took the obligatory before and after pictures of the ketchup bottle to send to his uncle who does not love ketchup. The waitress assured me that ketchup is part vegetable but I am not entirely convinced.

We took the traditional picture at the caution children sign.

On Saturday, my brother and sister minded the boys for much of the day (including a trip to Milano’s for pizza, let joy be unconfined) leaving myself and Mr. Waffle to our own devices. We were a bit blinded by the unexpected freedom. We went for breakfast and, after a trip to the Crawford gallery and a mild wander around the town in the rain including a look at food fair in the City Hall, we waddled on to lunch. In slight desperation, wondering what to do next, I asked Mr. Waffle to check a list of 17 hidden exciting things to do in Cork he found on the internet. One of them was feed the ducks in the Lough. I mean, I’ve no objection to feeding the ducks but I wouldn’t exactly call it exciting. We had about an hour and a half until Mr. Waffle was meeting a friend for coffee and I almost suggested going home (to be fair, it was lashing) but then I had a mild stroke of inspiration and we went to see Elizabeth Fort and the Protestant cathedral.

Elizabeth Fort boasted mildly exciting views and an air raid shelter which I don’t remember seeing before. It was extremely damp and had a random collection of cold damp objects for viewing including this slightly alarming map.

I quite like the cathedral although I am not generally a fan of neo-gothic. Mr. Waffle wondered about the candles and the IHS on the altar. “Maybe they are very high church?” I offered. “Not in Ireland,” he said firmly. He said it was the least Protestant looking Protestant church he had ever been in. I wonder was he misled because Ireland is basically full of 19th century neo-gothic churches that are Catholic and there are inevitable stylistic similarities. It’s a mystery.

That evening, the boys played board games with my sister and her partner and had a fantastic time.

We drove back on Sunday morning. It was actually a really good idea to go in the end. We all had a lovely time. It turns out that despite the cynical words of my son Michael on another occasion, there is such a thing as fun for all the family.